Dr. Anthony Fauci, who successfully treated Dallas Ebola patient Nina Pham at the National Institutes of Health, said the response Friday by Govs. Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie is not backed back science since patients can’t transmit Ebola unless they are symptomatic.

“As a scientist and as a health person, if I were asked, I would not have recommended that,” Fauci said on “ABC’s This Week.”

Cuomo and Christie initiated the mandatory quarantine after NYC Dr. Craig Spencer’s was diagnosed with Ebola on Thursday when he returned from treating patients in Guinea. He was self-monitoring his temperature and visited a bowling alley, park and rode the subway days before he spiked the fever and admitted to Bellevue Hospital.

Fauci said Spencer followed the protocols by immediately reporting his fever of 100.3 He worries a 21-day mandatory quarantine would stop other healthcare workers like Spencer from traveling to Africa to help.

“The idea of a blanket quarantine for people who come back could possibly have a negative consequence of essentially disincentivizing people from wanting to go there,” Fauci said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“…The best way to protect Americans is to stop the epidemic in Africa and we need those health care workers to do that.”

But Christie said he has “no second thoughts,” arguing shifting federal guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention forced states to take action of their own to protect their citizens.

“I think the CDC will eventually come around to our point of view on this,” Christie said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Dr. Craig SpencerFacebook

He said a voluntarily quarantine isn’t reliable, pointing to the NBC News crew who “said they were going to self-quarantine and then two days later they were out picking up takeout food in Princeton.”

“…I don’t believe when you are dealing with something as serious as this that we can count on a voluntary system. This is government’s job.”

He added: “I think this is a policy that will become a national policy sooner rather than later.”

One nurse returning from fighting Ebola in Sierra Leone is currently under the new quarantine in New Jersey and says she’s been poorly treated.

“This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me,” Kaci Hickox wrote in a letter to the Dallas Morning News. “I am scared about how health care workers will be treated at airports when they declare that they have been fighting Ebola in West Africa.”

US Rep. Darrell Issa, a frequent critic of the Obama administration and its Ebola response, surprisingly didn’t embrace the New York and New Jersey’s quarantine steps. He said that he understands the governors are doing what they believe is right, but science suggests immediate isolation “is not the answer.”

“The science has told us — if we are to take them at their word — that if somebody does not have an elevated temperature or the other later symptoms, then we can rely on them not being contagious,” Issa, R-Calif., said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “ If that’s true, then immediate isolation of people for 21 days is not the answer.”